Free SHS will damage Ghana - Amoafo Yeboah

Independent Presidential candidate in the 2008 elections, Kwesi Amoafo Yeboah said the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) free SHS policy will damage the country.

According to him, the policy will kill the "Ghanaian sense of pride" and could worsen living conditions as the country struggles to come to terms with the numerous freebies it is currently given out.

“Ghanaians are not beggars. We are where we are because of the way we think and when you tell somebody that government will take care of you, go and have 20 kids if you want.….and government will take care of your 20 kids, then where is that person’s pride as a parent?”

He said if government begins to take away the sense of pride and duty parents feel towards their children, the "can-do spirit" of the Ghanaian could be lost.

Citing the National Health Insurance Scheme as an example, the one-time Presidential hopeful said: “The NHIS itself has been in trouble since 2005 and we constantly have to find ways to continue to fund it. The National Youth Employment Programme [has faced] challenges since it was set up... Now we are going to add free education?"

"What happened to the basic schools that are free already and the condition that they are in; they don’t even have toilets. When you do that we are going to end up with the same system that we have in the lower level schools,” he cautioned.

The former candidate who won 0.23 percent of vote cast in the 2008 elections added, “we are not going to get anywhere. We are going to continue this football match mentality where we have two major teams just crashing everybody. It’s not good for our politics.”